API Mocking

COVID-19 Note: There is a virus shutting down the world right now. It’s destroying a lot of things including lives and livelihoods. I want to take some of the focus off the destruction this virus is causing, and focus instead on creating something. I’m doing a series of posts on API testing as my way of fighting back against the virus. We can still go on with life even in times like this.

You might have heard about API mocking before but what exactly does that mean? No, it’s not pointing your finger at an API while laughing at it and making fun of it (as tempting as that might be sometimes). Mocking is actually an important test strategy that we can use to control how an API responds to certain calls.

Mocks for Exploring

Let’s imagine you have an application with a front end that calls certain APIs to get the data that it needs and then renders that data to the user. This is a pretty common way to build websites, but what if you want to test what happens when the API returns an error code? It can be hard to do this kind of testing because you would have to somehow trigger an error in the API. The problem is API designers want their API to return good data and so finding situations where it gives back error codes can be hard. You could try things like disconnecting the network or intercepting the network calls to trigger errors. Or you could just create a mock.

A mock API is just a locally hosted version of the API that will return preset calls for given endpoints. If you have a mock API, you can set it up so that the endpoint will return the kind of error you are trying to test for and then point the application to the mock API instead of the real one. This allows you to generate the exact situation that you want to check. 

Essentially when you are mocking out an API you are creating a (usually simplified) version of the API that you can use instead of the real one so that you can have full control over what it does. This makes it much easier to create a wide array of test scenarios that can greatly enhance your ability to explore how a front end will react to different kinds of data in an API call.

Mocks for Automation

Using mocks to help with exploratory testing isn’t the only way they are beneficial. Another way to use API mocking is to help out with test automation. Mocks can help solve a couple of test automation challenges.

One thing they can help with is flaky tests due to network problems. If the network disconnects or slows down during a test run, any network calls being performed could cause test failures that you aren’t interested in. A mock API can eliminate the need to make network calls. If you setup and host a mock API locally you can use it in your tests without needing to do any network calls.

Another potential benefit of mock APIs in test automation is that your tests can run a bit faster. If you are getting your data locally instead of sending it off to a server somewhere and waiting for a reply, your tests can run much faster, depending of course on how many network calls you are making and how slow the network is.

Problems with API mocks

However, using mocks isn’t the ultimate solution to all of the world’s testing problems. There are some challenges that can arise from using them as well. One of the biggest challenges lies in data management. You see, mock APIs aren’t the real deal. I know. Mind blown right?

Despite how obvious that statement might seem, its easy to miss what is right there in front of your face. A mock API is usually a handcrafted affair that is setup to match what the real API does. This gives you the benefits mentioned above, but it also means that the mock API is only as accurate as you have made it to be. If the data and endpoints in the mock API don’t match up with the real API, you may be missing important stuff in your testing. Getting a mock API setup just right can be a challenge in it’s own right, but even after that, we know that software continues to change which means that in all probability the real API will change. If you don’t have some mechanism in place to keep the mock API up to date, it will no longer accurately reflect the system you are testing.

Data Management

This is where data management comes into play. You need to be thinking about the data in your mock API and how you can ensure that it stays up to date. If you don’t, you will end up with problems like an out of date mock API that no longer tests what it should, or a maintenance headache that you need to deal with every time something changes.

So what can you do? Well, test data management is a complex thing on it’s own and this article is already getting long, so we can’t dive into it in detail, but let me share a couple of examples of things I’ve done in the past.

One strategy that I’ve used to reduce the maintenance work of a mock API is to create a script that can update it. This doesn’t work for every kind of API and may not always be perfect, but in my situation it was very helpful. I had a test site that was setup with the data that I wanted and when I wanted to update the mock API, I would execute the script which would make calls to the test site and update the mock API with any changes in the API. This worked well in this particular case because the API I was using was a hypermedia API which included information in the responses that my script could easily use to see if there were any new endpoints added or other changes. Not all APIs give you that kind of information and so this strategy may not work as well in other cases, but I would encourage you in general to consider cases where you might have to do manual data updates like this and to see if you can’t learn enough scripting to automates parts of it.

Another strategy I have used in the past to keep API mocks up to date, is to do some variation of contract testing. The idea of this (at least as I have implemented it), is to have some set of tests that checks the API functionality you are using in your mocks. Any changes found by these tests are changes to the API contract and let you know that you need to update your mocks.

Now, these are just a few ideas and are certainly not perfect solutions, but hopefully they give you something that you can build off of if you are thinking about data management in your API mocks. 

So should you use mock APIs? Well, it depends of course on what problem you are trying to solve, but they certainly are a powerful tool to keep in your testing toolbox.

Photo by Phil Hearing on Unsplash